We run into problems every ****ing round because the community does not deign to give proposed stats so much as a glance until a week before signups open. I fully support Jintao's attempt to change this by taking or threatening to take the decision earlier, even without broad community input.

__________________The outraged poets threw sticks and rocks over the side of the bridge. They were all missing Mary and he felt a contented smug feeling wash over him. He would have given them a coy little wave if the roof hadn't collapsed just then. Mary then found himself in the middle of an understandably shocked family's kitchen table. So he gave them the coy little wave and realized it probably would have been more effective if he hadn't been lying on their turkey.

Yeah I guess the only 'difference' Zik has pure normal attack fleets and their defence fleets has ability to bulk out the standard fleet.

Why should someone go zik in these stats?

On BS the Terran fleet is better, on Fi Xan is better, Terran De craps all over it and all its steal ships aren't viable to steal anything useful. I can see literally zero reason to play this race or accommodate it into an alliance strategy, apart from nostalgia.

If I'm being pessimistic then what zik is here is a shitty version of Terran with crappy defence ships.

On BS the Terran fleet is better, on Fi Xan is better, Terran De craps all over it and all its steal ships aren't viable to steal anything useful. I can see literally zero reason to play this race or accommodate it into an alliance strategy, apart from nostalgia.

If I'm being pessimistic then what zik is here is a shitty version of Terran with crappy defence ships.

I have already sent Jintao the revised version based on Patrikc and Jin's feedback. As soon as they're online, I will share the link here.

__________________The outraged poets threw sticks and rocks over the side of the bridge. They were all missing Mary and he felt a contented smug feeling wash over him. He would have given them a coy little wave if the roof hadn't collapsed just then. Mary then found himself in the middle of an understandably shocked family's kitchen table. So he gave them the coy little wave and realized it probably would have been more effective if he hadn't been lying on their turkey.

Can u move aside now and stay quiet. The grown ups want to have a talk

If you feel you need to have a bcalc as a comforter to help you work out stats then go ahead.

90% of the stats are blatantly evident on the spreadsheet. The ints are crappy, the armour is way too high on xan, cat decided it didn't feel like targeting cr this round. Stuff like this should mean they aren't ready to go to beta. Fundamental issues. The bcalc is to check effs, to check for glitches, to tweak for example weather 100k banshees kill 80 or 85k beetles etc...

The basic who hits who and when is on the spreadsheet, that is what people need right now

If you feel you need to have a bcalc as a comforter to help you work out stats then go ahead.

90% of the stats are blatantly evident on the spreadsheet. The ints are crappy, the armour is way too high on xan, cat decided it didn't feel like targeting cr this round. Stuff like this should mean they aren't ready to go to beta. Fundamental issues. The bcalc is to check effs, to check for glitches, to tweak for example weather 100k banshees kill 80 or 85k beetles etc...

The basic who hits who and when is on the spreadsheet, that is what people need right now

Thanks for your response, well laid out and we're back on track
I like to use the 'stats analysis' to look at effs (both emp as kill/steal) etc, gives you a quick idea of how a set is supposed to work without even having to touch the bcalc.

In this thread 3 people asked to get the stuff uploaded to a real server, that's basicly 75% - we should not be debating this

I understand that veil is reworking his stats but I had 10 mins free to matrix these ones and tbh ter/etd/cat are pretty balanced. If you could make zik attack into can more then you are on the right lines.

Issues and fixes and thoughts:

- Why is there no cr fleets?

- Cloak is OP. If you gave Xan and Etd (who have cloak) stand alone roiding fleets (ie. Fi and Cr) which had low int cloak ships then you could swap Zik from Fi to De roider with a low int killer and give it more stopping and roiding options.

- Cat has one too many emp ship imo.

- Xans armour needs lowering a lot. It's probably about 70-100 too high across the board on A/C.

My main feedback was xan too strong, zik useless. Which is especially sad since zik's attack fleet is fully made up out of norm ships. Doesn't even have a steal att ship. Personally looks weird too me, but seems i'm the only one that thinks so

Regarding cr pods, i asked to keep it to 5 * 2 pods. which pods to cut was upto him

Haven't glared at anything left of init. I'll do that after i see a balanced set on the first part of the sheet. Paisley's r72 set was probably the most offensive set we've had in a very long time. Yet when i first looked at it it was way way way more offensive than it ended up as. So really don't look at anything left of init yet. That can all still completely change

Almost every round of PA ever has given Xan teamup partners. If you want to suggest that in all those rounds, Xan has been "OP beyond all", then you need to provide a little more evidence than 'because I say so'.

__________________The outraged poets threw sticks and rocks over the side of the bridge. They were all missing Mary and he felt a contented smug feeling wash over him. He would have given them a coy little wave if the roof hadn't collapsed just then. Mary then found himself in the middle of an understandably shocked family's kitchen table. So he gave them the coy little wave and realized it probably would have been more effective if he hadn't been lying on their turkey.

Presumably because they believe Xan (or a fleet strategy involving Xan, which comes down to the same) isn't good enough.

__________________The outraged poets threw sticks and rocks over the side of the bridge. They were all missing Mary and he felt a contented smug feeling wash over him. He would have given them a coy little wave if the roof hadn't collapsed just then. Mary then found himself in the middle of an understandably shocked family's kitchen table. So he gave them the coy little wave and realized it probably would have been more effective if he hadn't been lying on their turkey.

Presumably because they believe Xan (or a fleet strategy involving Xan, which comes down to the same) isn't good enough.

That is purely because of the awfulness of these stats. Xan is completely unviaible. These stats are gauged around de forts and they made the peg a 1 ship wrecking ball to Xan.

If you make a proper set and make Xan remotely competitive then cloak is OP. For rounds and rounds Xan has been a nightmare to balance. As soon as it can roid 3/5 races it becomes OP. The fact the peg has been made to completely nullify it shows how powerful the ability is.

Xan cannot land Terran (the most picked race) and itself (counterproductive) in rd73 stats. It's not competitive and overly gimped to nullify it's threat. If Xan could have done either of these things then it would have had a much larger share of the player base. On top of that no cloak was added to Etd roiding fleets, further gimping the ability because of its strength in combat. As nearly always etd has gone down the 'safe' emp/norm route to avoid balance issues.

In the proposed stats Xan Fi can roid everything but itself. Zik Fi is literally pointless. Why would you bother as a strategist to combine a cloaked race with better ints with a race that has same targeting, with worse ints, and no viable def ships.

If you take Fi off of Zik and make it a De roider and switch Etds de fleet to cr (with a cloaked ship) and change Etd Cos cloaked ship to norm or emp then you may have a better and more balanced combat distribution.

Currently you have both fi/co closes fleets bouncing off a same int cloaked ship to stop them. It's not fun, it's provides no enjoyment and frankly is the laziest way to solve an issue that shouldn't exist.

Bs is also in a terrible spot, Fr both fires first (Shadow), simultaneously (Unicorn) and has two EMP ships, all with faster traveltime.

The more I look at these the more I feel it's a mistake omitting Cr from attack classes, it makes balancing things unnecessarily harder and doesn't really achieve anything. I still prefer 1/1/2/2/2/2 pods with Zik/Etd being able to steal into one of the classes with a single pod. That's not to say leaving a class podless can't be done, but this is a poor attempt at it.

Bs is also in a terrible spot, Fr both fires first (Shadow), simultaneously (Unicorn) and has two EMP ships, all with faster traveltime.

The more I look at these the more I feel it's a mistake omitting Cr from attack classes, it makes balancing things unnecessarily harder and doesn't really achieve anything. I still prefer 1/1/2/2/2/2 pods with Zik/Etd being able to steal into one of the classes with a single pod. That's not to say leaving a class podless can't be done, but this is a poor attempt at it.

Why are you looking for a 5 class pod system, Jintao?

Agreed and on top of that I think it's a lot of work to rework these stats to viable.

The extra pod thing for stealers is a big no no though as I found out. FARMERS ARE EVERYWHERE!!!

I offered this to Jintao a few days back but no reply. Ita only T1 and ints but if he replies I'll add more.

The extra pod thing for stealers is a big no no though as I found out. FARMERS ARE EVERYWHERE!!!

Well you said it correctly, farmers are everywhere, though leaving room for creative ship strats by cov op/stolen pods is what a lot of people find entertaining.
Cheaters will usualy entertaining themself by gaining advantages through illegale gameplay, and there is a million ways to do this.
Removing ability to steal/covop pods, and telling ourself that this will make the game fairer would be living in constant denial.

This round a high ranked gal/bp full of HCs/former HCs of several alliances(CT/Ult/HR/Faceless) had people closed yet again this round, even though not pod stealing/covopping they still found a way to gain advantages.

That cheating exist should never be used as an argument wich we should build stats on.

They weren't NESSECARY in my stats. You just decided you wanted to play a class that didn't start with pods. That was your choice.

Please don't assume to know what I think or want.

Quote:

Anytime now that we allow a race to steal into class it doesn't have pods for we open the game up to abuse.

You yourself were quite vocal that farmers will cheat 100%, so we cannot risk it. Especially in Viels set where currently one farmed ship completely swings things.

I said no such thing. I only said that you can't ignore it and say it's not your job to deal with cheaters.

I don't see how you can justify Ter in your stats, they would be absolutely terrible without Cat De/Zik Bs to team up with (or Fi pods for themselves). Banshee wrecks Ter De for no losses whatsoever with ETA advantage.

__________________The outraged poets threw sticks and rocks over the side of the bridge. They were all missing Mary and he felt a contented smug feeling wash over him. He would have given them a coy little wave if the roof hadn't collapsed just then. Mary then found himself in the middle of an understandably shocked family's kitchen table. So he gave them the coy little wave and realized it probably would have been more effective if he hadn't been lying on their turkey.

Sorry but still not seeing any point in playing Zik. The Fi is a worse version of Xan without cloak and Bs is a worse version of Terran with less armour and worse ints. Then you have 4 def ships that might aswell not exist.

I don't feel you have adressed the core issue in your stats, that your grand idea around Zik makes it less playable than normal. Still you have a stupid cloaked same int ship to combat Fi which really just protects Xan and allows them to free roid Cat/Zik/Etd.

Xan Fr also smashes everything but Etd, another cloaked ship to stop it. You can nerf armour and emp res as much as you like but the targeting makes Xan soooo OP there is almost no point in playing another race (maybe Terran for fort value strat).

I'm inclined to agree. It looks to me like Zik was meant primarily as a teamup partner for Xan Fi and Ter Bs, but for both those fleets, it only stops 1 additional ship, while 1, respectively 4 others (some EMP) keep prefiring both fleets.

__________________The outraged poets threw sticks and rocks over the side of the bridge. They were all missing Mary and he felt a contented smug feeling wash over him. He would have given them a coy little wave if the roof hadn't collapsed just then. Mary then found himself in the middle of an understandably shocked family's kitchen table. So he gave them the coy little wave and realized it probably would have been more effective if he hadn't been lying on their turkey.

With the above in mind, cutlass now init 4 (with peg) and Mara now init 5 (with shadow).

Any other recommendations?

Doesn't make zik/xan land ter still. It just stops Terran attacking Zik, making Terran less playable and pushing more people to Xan. Xan could already land the rest solo so I don't see it as an improvement. The shadow/Mara change just makes FR a little less playable.

Honestly I think the issue lies primarily in fact you have left out CR which unbalances the combat and that you are trying to combine Zik with Xan which was never going to work.

Also the fact Zik has no viable def ship outside its roiding fleets doesn't help it. You would have been better combining Zik with Cat or Etd to take advantage of emp allowing a low int norm ship to be used on defence and make Zik decent.

Doesn't make zik/xan land ter still. It just stops Terran attacking Zik, making Terran less playable and pushing more people to Xan. Xan could already land the rest solo so I don't see it as an improvement. The shadow/Mara change just makes FR a little less playable.

Honestly I think the issue lies primarily in fact you have left out CR which unbalances the combat and that you are trying to combine Zik with Xan which was never going to work.

Also the fact Zik has no viable def ship outside its roiding fleets doesn't help it. You would have been better combining Zik with Cat or Etd to take advantage of emp allowing a low int norm ship to be used on defence and make Zik decent.

I think you missed a lot of solos there. EVERYONE lands Cat Solo. It's emp. But you made sure you included them for Zik I notice.

But it's a little off point. It was not about whether Zik can land stuff, it's about whether it's worth going Zik Fi over Xan Fi, no. Or if it's worth going Zik Bs over Terran Be, no. Also does Zik offer anything defensively the either of those 2 don't, no. So maybe what I should be asking is.... why should I pick Zik, what makes it better than rest and how will benefit my alliance. I'm currently reading towards pure Xan or fr/de forts. Convince me to add Zik please.

I think you missed a lot of solos there. EVERYONE lands Cat Solo. It's emp. But you made sure you included them for Zik I notice.

But it's a little off point. It was not about whether Zik can land stuff, it's about whether it's worth going Zik Fi over Xan Fi, no. Or if it's worth going Zik Bs over Terran Be, no. Also does Zik offer anything defensively the either of those 2 don't, no. So maybe what I should be asking is.... why should I pick Zik, what makes it better than rest and how will benefit my alliance. I'm currently reading towards pure Xan or fr/de forts. Convince me to add Zik please.

Please can you perform some calculations as at the minute you're just another person with an opinion.

Zik BS > Ter BS.

Zik BS can roid race classes solo and it has the capability of stealing into its BS class.